Public and Private in Natural Resource Governance. A False Dichotomy?

摘要

This edited volume discusses the relations between public and private in resource management. Its main message is that we can no longer think in terms of a dichotomy between public and private. We are witnessing the emergence of various kinds of hybrid institutions which are simultaneously public and private, or neither public nor private. In the first chapter, the editor develops a conceptual framework to capture the new arrangements in resource management. Instead of a dichotomy, we need to think in terms of distinctions and various dimensions. First, this is the distinction between the state as the public sphere and the private sphere of voluntary interaction epitomized by the state. Second, a distinction needs to be recognized between the political community as the public realm and the private as the more particularistic sphere of social life. The third distinction is made between the socially visible and the personal.